This study examines cultural values in tourist online reviews of Makkah and Jeddah, two major urban destinations in Saudi Arabia. It compares value structures and their influence on each city’s symbolic position in national tourism. The analysis uses 4,781 TripAdvisor reviews for Makkah and 5,255 for Jeddah, posted between 2008 and 2024. BERTopic extracted latent thematic topics, which were classified using Schwartz’s theory of basic human values. Findings show clear contrasts: Makkah emphasizes tradition and universalism, reflecting spiritual devotion and moral depth, while Jeddah highlights hedonism, stimulation, and achievement, emphasizing leisure, novelty, and symbolic modernity. Some themes, such as religious architecture and memorable trips, overlap, revealing shared cultural references. The results inform destination managers, tourism planners, and policymakers, guiding value-sensitive strategies that respect the distinct symbolic roles of each city while boosting appeal under Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030. This study is the first to apply a value-based framework to compare urban tourist discourse in the country and demonstrates how combining natural language processing with value theory can reveal broader cultural patterns in tourist online reviews.